1. Technical Field
This invention relates to website content management, in particular to methods and apparatus for communicating information concerning visitor behavior to content management systems to allow the content to be controlled in dependence on current behavior.
2. Related Art
There has been a long standing desire to provide personalized websites to enhance customer experience. This demands that the web content server constructing the pages being viewed by the visitor (a content management system or “CMS”) is able to select content that is appropriate to that visitor. To be really effective this process needs real time information on the behavior or status of the user.
It is also recognized that the best way of evaluating and analyzing visitor behavior is by the collection of real time information from the client environment by “web analytic” or “e-business intelligence systems” and the analysis of this information to extract significant behavior or changes in status. This may be behavior or status changes occurring within the current session or life cycle information computed for the current visitor (for example recency—how recently the user visited the site previously, frequency—the regularity with which the user visits the site, latency—the average time between visits, etc.). A system which provides such a combination of functions can be described as a behavioral analysis system or “BAS”.
Traditionally, the integration of CMS and BAS systems to provide effective relevant real time customization has been complex and expensive to implement.